realizing selflessness

[vinceschubert]

But it’s actually more like an air-traffic control tower—elevated for a panoramic view, with windows on all sides—but with no one in it

Excellent image. And it reveals the next subtle assumption.

The president has disappeared, but the tower remains: an elevated, central location from which the whole scene is supposedly surveyed. It is an empty witness-position rather than an inhabited controller.

But is even the tower present?

Vision appears panoramic, but does vision contain a window or a point behind it? Sounds have apparent locations, but do they arrive at a listening station? Bodily sensations are spatially organised, but is there somewhere central to which they report?

Is there actually an empty control tower—or only scenery, sound, sensation and thought, with imagination constructing a tower from which they seem to be experienced?

Perhaps the airport wasn’t merely left unfinished. Perhaps there were never any runways, tower or boundary around it—just sunlight, birds, rabbits and coyotes, with thought superimposing the abandoned-airport story.

has the tingling in my legs always been there and I just started to notice it, or is it a new thing?

Lovely example of not-knowing. Present tingling contains no record of how long it has existed. Attention may have made a previously unnoticed sensation prominent; posture or physiology may also be producing something new or intermittent. Direct experience can’t settle its history.

Right now, before thought calls it “tingling in my legs,” what is actually present? Numerous flickering points? Pulsing? Vibration? Do they themselves form legs, or does the body-map provide their location?

There’s no spiritual significance required. If persistent tingling becomes troublesome or is accompanied by numbness, pain or weakness, it deserves ordinary practical attention.

thoughts, perhaps verbal thoughts especially, do still often suggest that they’re being issued from the control room.

Yes. This may be the most useful place to investigate now.

A verbal thought arrives in K’s familiar voice, perhaps accompanied by subtle movement or tension in the throat. That combination can strongly imply: “Someone in here just said this.”

Wait for the next verbal thought.

Was its content known before it appeared?
Can the moment of its production be found?
Does it travel out of the throat and into somewhere that hears it?
Is there first a speaker, then speech—or does the complete voice-thought simply appear?

If the thought says, “I’m thinking about the control room,” does the word “I” identify its source, or is “I” merely one of the sounds appearing within the thought?

Softening the throat may be an interesting experiment, especially if it loosens the bodily component of negative emotion. Just don’t make relaxation a requirement or a method for silencing the supposed thinker. Let the throat tighten too, and examine it.

Does the throat produce the thought—or do throat sensation, familiar inner voice and the image of a source arise together and create the impression that thought has come from “in here”?

The hot iron ball of Mu may be a useful image of the pressure to resolve what cannot be solved conceptually. But right now, is there a ball, a blockage or someone trying to disgorge it—or only changing throat sensations and thoughts explaining them?

Now, forget all of that. (or go back to it when you want entertainment)
In this body there is a deep resonant (what could be called sensation) in the sternum area. The juicy story containing that is that words and sensations are not where we need to look.
Feelings (and that is inadequate) of knowing (crying here as this expression is attempted) wants recognition.
It doesn't care for accuracy. Just acknowledgment of existence.
No analysis required.
It's not a source. It's not a result. It is something so fundamental (yet it itself recognises something even more fundamental)
You could say that this is what we are, but that trivialises it.
You could say that this is existence, but that ignores the extensiveness (of it?)

What i hope for is that you experience a glimmer of recognition of what this rant is attempting to express. (outpouring of love happening here)

vince

[vinceschubert]

https://soundcloud.com/vince-schubert-1 ... -the-words

## Before the Words

**Verse 1**
There’s a note beneath the breastbone
Too deep to become sound,
It wasn’t made by anyone,
It wasn’t waiting to be found.
And when I try to speak of it,
The words dissolve in tears—
Something older than the question
Is asking to be met here.

**Chorus**
Let it be known without being named,
Let it be met without being explained.
No source, no answer, no reason to prove—
Only this wordless immensity moving through.
Love with no owner, open and free,
Recognising something deeper than “me.”

**Verse 2**
It doesn’t care for accuracy,
Or stories dressed as truth.
It doesn’t need analysis
To tell it what to do.
It asks for no conclusion,
No certainty or sign—
Only simple recognition:
Yes, this too is here. This too is life.

**Chorus**
Let it be known without being named,
Let it be met without being explained.
No source, no answer, no reason to prove—
Only this wordless immensity moving through.
Love with no owner, open and free,
Recognising something deeper than “me.”

**Bridge**
Call it existence—the word is too small.
Call it what we are—that doesn’t hold it at all.
A knowing falls silent before the unknown,
And what seemed far away is more intimate than home.

**Final Chorus**
Let it be known without being named,
Let it be met without being explained.
No need to reach it, no distance to cross,
Nothing arriving and nothing ever lost.
Love with no owner, needing no claim—
Here before language, here before name.

**Outro**
There’s a note beneath the breastbone.
No one put it there.
No one needs to understand it.
Still, the whole world hears.

[whoknows]

Is there actually an empty control tower—or only scenery, sound, sensation and thought, with imagination constructing a tower from which they seem to be experienced?

I suppose you could say that the control tower was never really there, but in the version of the story I prefer, the empty control tower is not the self but the sense of self.

There’s no one in the tower, and there’s no air traffic to be controlled, so the tower is not serving as a centralized hub for visual observation, electronic information collection, and directing flights. That is, it isn’t functioning in any way as a control tower, and there’s no need for a control tower.

Someone driving by on the highway might think it’s a functional control tower, but if they investigate, they’ll see that they’re mistaken.

Maybe it will eventually be torn down, but probably it’ll just stay there, and birds will build nests there and teenagers will sneak up there to drink.

(More to come . . . )

[whoknows]

Skipping to the deep stuff:
Thank you, dear vince.
I’m worrying that I am not adequate to the task of sensing what you’re pointing to, but I’m going to read it one more time, then sleep on it, then return to it in the morning.
With love & deep gratitude,
K

[whoknows]

Can’t help refining my version of your control room metaphor:
Forget the White House situation room.
We’re all led to believe that there’s a little air traffic control tower in our heads where data is collected and decisions are made and from which directions are issued.
But if we investigate, we discover that the control tower is empty—no staff, no equipment—and in fact a control tower was never needed because the planes handle the coordination on their own.
But there’s no need to demolish the tower. It’s not getting in anyone’s way, and the architecture is interesting.

Responding to other parts of your earlier message (for entertainment, as you suggested) before returning to the deep stuff:

Right now, before thought calls it “tingling in my legs,” what is actually present? Numerous flickering points? Pulsing? Vibration? Do they themselves form legs, or does the body-map provide their location?

What’s actually here are some small splotches of a tingly feeling that the mind maps as being in the legs.
And at the moment, there's more widespread tingling, mapped by the mind to various places in the body.
This evokes a sense of life-force being freed up.

A verbal thought arrives in K’s familiar voice, perhaps accompanied by subtle movement or tension in the throat. That combination can strongly imply: “Someone in here just said this.”

Wait for the next verbal thought.

Was its content known before it appeared?

No.
(A prediction could’ve been made about several likely topics, given current circumstances, but not the specifics, and it could’ve been a completely random topic.)

Can the moment of its production be found?

Hmm . . . The moment of noticing the thought can be found but maybe not the moment of its production?

Does it travel out of the throat and into somewhere that hears it?

Taking the question metaphorically, I suppose the imagined hearer of verbal thoughts is inside the skull someplace, but the thought doesn’t travel; it’s just heard from a distance? But maybe it’s heard from right there in the throat?
Taking the question more literally, either the thought wasn’t actually in the throat to begin with or maybe there’s sometimes subvocalization happening in the throat, but in either case, there’s nothing to be heard by the ears.

Is there first a speaker, then speech—or does the complete voice-thought simply appear?

No “speaker” of thoughts can be found, only the “speaking.”
There's just an inference made by the mind that there's a speaker of the thoughts.
But it's a very stubborn inference.

If the thought says, “I’m thinking about the control room,” does the word “I” identify its source, or is “I” merely one of the sounds appearing within the thought?

Well, the thought arose as part of this particular ever-changing pattern of perceptions and thoughts—the one known as K—not a pattern known by another name.
But within the pattern known as K, “I” is simply part of the thought and doesn’t actually point to a more specific point of origin that can be found.
But the mind is accustomed to believing that "I" points to something.

Does the throat produce the thought—or do throat sensation, familiar inner voice and the image of a source arise together and create the impression that thought has come from “in here”?

Where or how the thought is produced can't be known, as far as I can tell.
All that can be accessed through direct experience is throat sensations, the thought, and additional layers of thought imagining the voice of the thought and its source or location.

The hot iron ball of Mu may be a useful image of the pressure to resolve what cannot be solved conceptually. But right now, is there a ball, a blockage or someone trying to disgorge it—or only changing throat sensations and thoughts explaining them?

Only sensations and thoughts are accessible, of course.

Moving on to the really important part . . .

[whoknows]

Now settling in for further consideration of the deep resonance below the breastbone . . .

Feelings (and that is inadequate) of knowing (crying here as this expression is attempted) wants recognition.

Noticing tingling in arms and legs, and tears arising, with no clear sense of what they’re about, but probably related to feeling all this love and care and attention directed my way and perhaps also related to a sense of approaching something fundamental and mysterious.

It doesn't care for accuracy. Just acknowledgment of existence.
No analysis required.
It's not a source. It's not a result. It is something so fundamental (yet it itself recognises something even more fundamental)
You could say that this is what we are, but that trivialises it.
You could say that this is existence, but that ignores the extensiveness (of it?)

This is all very evocative . . . of what? . . .
Of six-year-old K’s terror and awe in the face of the K’s mortality and everyone else’s and the fact of the existence of anything at all and her own existence in particular and (in philosophical terms learned much later, but the ideas were there) the fact that all things, including K, are not necessary but contingent—i.e., that K might never have existed and there might never have been a universe.
And it’s evocative of 21-year-old K’s terror and awe in facing mortality once again and that she is a small and powerless being in a large, mysterious, inexplicable universe and that she had no choice (as far as she knows) about whether to be born into this universe and has no choice about whether to die.

Aw, geez, gonna go sit in my car in the coffee shop parking lot to cry in semi-privacy . . .
(Got a chuckle on the way out because the scraggly little dog who was here two days ago was headed for the comfy chair I’d just vacated.)

What i hope for is that you experience a glimmer of recognition of what this rant is attempting to express.

Am I getting it at all?

(outpouring of love happening here)

Immense love and gratitude flowing.

And I now realize that it’s time to go home for lunch, so, to be continued . . .

* * * * *

Love with no owner, open and free,
Recognising something deeper than “me.”

Noticing that the lyrics to “Before the Words” make me think of the “I AM” and the capital-S Self. That whole world of discourse about the nature of persons and ultimate reality seems to me to lend itself more readily to talk of love than does the world of no-self discourse. (And of course, any sort of theism also lends itself more readily to talk of love.)

I feel like I might have more to say on all this, but maybe not today. I’m feeling drained.

[whoknows]

P.S. (Yep, this is #5 of this bunch.)

Started watching the recording of the Wednesday meeting, where you were groping toward putting this same thing into words, and you came up with “a knowing that we’re supported by life,” though you weren’t entirely happy with this.

I reread your message and song lyrics in light of that. The idea of being supported by life seems to resonate especially with the “love” idea that I commented on from the lyrics—the “love with no owner,” which “no one needs to understand” but which “the whole world hears.”

I would like to have a sense of something akin to love or support as a fundamental aspect of reality, but I don’t.

I was mainly making connections with my sense of the overwhelming, mysterious, inexplicable nature of existence, to which I respond with terrified awe.

[vinceschubert]

my sense of the overwhelming, mysterious, inexplicable nature of existence, to which I respond with terrified awe.

This seems to be the stumbling block.
Let's examine it...
Do you experience it before thinking about it? ..or only when thinking?
What triggers it?
Do you feel it in the body? If so, where? (below the chest?)
Do stories arrive with it?
What age (approx.) were you when you first experienced it?
Do you salivate, cry, or get angry when it occurs?

What else comes to mind about it? (anything at all - even if it doesn't seem connected)

v

[whoknows]

Wow. Okay. This is intense.

The thought arose that it’s weird that this conversation is happening in a completely public forum. I’ve had that thought quite a few times before, but there was a lot more emotion around it this time, suggesting that there is indeed something important and personal here.

Do you experience it before thinking about it? ..or only when thinking?
What triggers it?

The feelings are triggered by thinking—thinking about mortality and about the fact that something exists rather than nothing and how utterly inexplicable that is. I experience a sort of nauseating, terrifying, disorienting existential angst when imagining that there might have been nothing. (I used the phrase “terrified awe” before and was thinking that “terrified” might be too strong, but actually, it’s probably suitable.)

Do you feel it in the body? If so, where? (below the chest?)

My usual tight throat and constriction of breathing and, right now, also a more general constriction and a little shakiness in the whole torso. And lots of tightness in the face and jaw.

Do stories arrive with it?

Nothing I can think of besides what I’ve already said.

What age (approx.) were you when you first experienced it?

6.

Do you salivate, cry, or get angry when it occurs?

Cry.

What else comes to mind about it? (anything at all - even if it doesn't seem connected)

Parents got divorced when I was 5.
Got my tonsils out when I was 6. I wonder if something about surgery or general anesthesia could’ve weirded me out, but I don’t remember anything like that.
I remember, around that time, my mom warning me about something that could be a fire hazard at home and being a bit freaked out by that.
That’s all I’m coming up with at moment.
No one close to me died until I was in college.

[whoknows]

Continued from the last post . . .

I thought it was odd that you inquired about salivating as well as crying and anger, but I figured you had a good reason, and by the time I was finishing up writing my last post (in bed, way past my bedtime, with the lights out, awkwardly typing on my phone), I was noticing salivating, but it seemed like maybe it was nothing unusual and I was just paying more attention to it, or maybe I’m very suggestible. Looked it up this morning, and I see that fear can trigger salivation.

So now I’m experimenting:
Intentionally entertaining thoughts that trigger terrified awe:
What if nothing had ever existed?
Immediate tears, constricted breathing, from throat to chest to belly to abdomen.
Salivation doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy.
Last night I mentioned shaking, but it’s more like small spasms.
Constriction in face. Tension in jaw. (Interesting that I notice sensations in the head only belatedly.)

Realizing that the specific thought I’ve perhaps always had the strongest reaction to is the idea that there perfectly well might never have been anything at all — which means no one ever to be aware of that, no consciousness, nothing, forever. But “forever” doesn’t even make sense. Time would be meaningless. Just nothing. Nothing. So thoroughly nothing that calling it nothing almost doesn’t make sense.
(Silently sobbing in the public library, but there’s no one sitting close enough to make me so self-conscious that I need to flee to the restroom or my car. Oh, heck, relocating to a seat where no one is even in view.)

* * * * *

The other thing on my mind, which seems like it’s in a completely different realm from my reactions to the mysterium tremendum, is that I’m still having more trouble than usual getting work done. I’m extra-resistant to getting started.

I’ve shared my idea before that I feel like I’m on a months-long awakening retreat. (Or, now, digging into six-year-old K’s psyche, maybe I’m doing intensive, inpatient psych treatment.) So most of my life-force is going into this, with little left over for anything else?

I’m hoping that having dealt with, or at least having begun to deal with, what feel like some major blockages — about part of my job I hated, about fear of finding reality lovely because then death will be scarier, about free will vs. determinism, about longing for “home” — and now digging into my reactions to the overwhelming mystery of existence, maybe eventually some energy can flow out elsewhere?

Or maybe my demand-resistance is another blockage that needs its own attention?

But maybe it’s simply the kind of thing that should be taken to my (nonexistent) therapist to get practical assistance with executive functioning, like I would take my car problems to a mechanic, not to my LU guide.

Slept in this morning because I was up late last night, and have now spent my shortened work time this morning on this. I have work that definitely needs to be done today, and I suppose I’ll manage later today, but probably only with some bullying of myself.

Need to head home for lunch.

With love & gratitude,
K

[whoknows]

What else comes to mind about it? (anything at all - even if it doesn't seem connected)

Something that came to mind during my very spacey afternoon sit:
I was an accident. And my parents, who were in their early twenties at the time, almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten married if they hadn’t conceived me. If abortion had been legal then, I’m sure my mom would have seriously considered it. Maybe she considered it anyway, but I’ve never asked because I don’t want to know, and she’d probably hate to admit it if she did consider it. My dad once told me he had a sort of mystical vision (in a dream? of an angel? I don’t remember exactly) telling him to make sure I was born. I don’t know how old I was when it was clear to me that I hadn’t been planned.

[whoknows]

P.S. re: work difficulties:
I took the current task that I’ve been weirdly resistant to doing, came up with a detailed step-by-step description of how I go about doing it (as if I were going to teach an AI how to do it for me), and made note of where I run into the most difficulty plus a few ways I’d already come up with to address those things. And just by doing that, I found it easier to get to work. ??? Brains are weird.

[vinceschubert]

Hi K, i wonder.. if non-existence (the fear of) might be what is 'blocking' the final shift.

Nothing might ever have existed.
K might never have existed.
K was not originally intended to exist.

Have you had anymore thoughts (or reactions) since your last post?

[whoknows]

i wonder.. if non-existence (the fear of) might be what is 'blocking' the final shift.

I have no idea how this stuff works, but I've heard a lot at LU and from Angelo about fear as a "barrier," and this is certainly a deep and fundmanetal and early fear for K.

Nothing might ever have existed.
K might never have existed.
K was not originally intended to exist.

Unsurprisingly, just reading this gives rise to tears.
But this feels a little like another desensistization process, like I was experiencing in considering the whole free will and determinism issue, like I already am starting to fear less afraid of . . . well, approaching this fear.

Have you had anymore thoughts (or reactions) since your last post?

No, nothing else.

If this is what's in the way (yeah, here's this familiar question arising), what do we DO about it?

I feel like I could linger with this longer and perhaps write more, but I also feel like I want to send this right away since it's only midnight your time and maybe you'll see this message and send another response before you go to sleep, and I feel eager to keep moving.

[vinceschubert]

I already am starting to fear less afraid of . . . well, approaching this fear.

It's already happening.

This feels a little like another desensitisation process

It's not so much desensitisation as it is recognising that the child's view is too limited for the current perspective.

I have no idea how this stuff works,

i have not idea how it works either. i just know that it does.
Story is that we expose it to current perspective and it's seen as irrelevant to today's experiencing.

Unsurprisingly, just reading this gives rise to tears.

This suggests a target being hit..

much love

vince